I am a designer and developer and content strategist. I use my experience as a magazine art director and web editor to help publishers, marketers, non-profits and self-branded individuals tell their stories in words and images. I follow all of the technologies that relate to the content business and try to identify the opportunities and pitfalls that these technologies pose. At the same time I am immersed in certain sectors through my content practice and am always looking to find connections between the worlds of neurology, economics, entertainment, travel and mobile technology. I live near the appropriately-scaled metropolis of Portland, Maine, and participate in its innovation economy (more stories at liveworkportland.org. A more complete bio and samples of my design work live at wingandko.com.

Why Can't We Be Friends? An Apple Google Truce Should Include App Standards

If Tim Cook and Larry Page are indeed talking peace, as Reuters reported this morning, the implications could be significant. Apple‘s iOS and Google‘s Android are fairly comparable (which is not to say identical) application platforms that cover just about any functionality a user might need. They are, however, only somewhat interoperable.

If you are like me, you have your feet (or hands or head) in both circles, aware that the Venn intersection is fairly small. Gmail works seamlessly with Google calendars, but not the iOS calendar app. Music purchased on the iTunes store is now readily accessible on iOS, but only through arcane third party apps on Android. If you have both kinds of devices in your household, or if you’re an Apple hardware loyalist who likes Google’s desktop apps, you’re in a bit of an awkward position.

I find myself between that rock and hard place. As a digital creative, most of my tools are native to Apple hardware, but for productivity, I like the speed and simplicity of Google’s apps. This is the point of view from which I looked at this morning’s “peace” report. Why can’t they just get along and make my life easier?

The situation is not dissimilar from the browser wars of the turn of the century when Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer went its own way and created hell for web developers who had to code for different browsers. The web standards movement, led by Jeffrey Zeldman and others (great interview with Zeldman here, on The Great Discontent), paved the way for the large chunk of app development that can now be done in HTML 5, CSS3 and JavaScript and work on all platforms.

But although developers can package web standard code into native applications in many ways (see my quick synopsis of contemporary mobile app development methods, courtesy of General Assembly’s Peter Bell, here), consumers cannot really use apps on different platforms in a seamless way.

So here’s a request to Cook and Page. Make peace by making some foundational standards that both platform’s apps will comply with. And while you’re at it, bring Microsoft and Amazon into the discussions, as well. What consumers want, and what Apple and Google for the most part deliver, are things that just work, without much explicit configuration.

“Convention over configuration,” is a motto of agile web developers, and Apple and Google could take that advice. If our everyday personal data, email, browsing history, app local storage, music, videos, photos, etc. were encrypted and portable to any “modern” device, then our hardware decisions could be unhinged from our software platform decisions.

As long as hardware serves as a “lock-in” for software it will really be impossible to tease out the patent tangle. Apple built iOS out first, but Google jucied Android’s growth by making it free to hardware manufacturers. Those are two distinct strategies to build essentially the same thing. Apple emphasizes paid content and Google makes its money on advertising supported services. Again, two ways to do the same thing. Add Microsoft and Amazon to the mix and you have potentially four branches of flow for the same kinds of information and functions.

This diversity is good for users, but the lack of interoperability serves as an excess friction that is holding back even greater growth. It is unclear from the Reuters report how far-ranging the discussions between Apple and Google are at this point. Between Apple’s win against Samsung and its reduced reliance on Google’s software in iOS 6, the company is in a position of strength.

But the case can be made (in fact, I have made it) that Google’s data platform is, ultimately, superior to Apple’s. All of the user interface design magic in the world can’t hide the fact that Google Now gets it right more often, and in many more situations, than Siri. And that is just one example. If consumers prefer Google’s platform (as they have shown in terms of Android’s market share, patent considerations aside), then the way forward for Apple’s continued growth is through cooperation, not warfare.

Over all of this, like a Shakespearian ghost, Steve Jobs‘ memory hangs like a disapproving fog. Does that matter? Can the new leader liberate himself from the previous leader’s grudge? The next act is about to begin…

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I know your desire of app compatible is a “pie-in-the-sky” wish, but you’re not taking into account real world considerations. It’s just a general “wouldn’t it be nice if” thought and that’s okay, but it’s not realistic or practical. Here’s why:

One of the greatest things about the world of mobility is how rapidly and quickly it is developing. The build-up of iOS and Android is one of the greatest feats of engineering in modern computing history. The breakneck speed of development and iteration is amazing and unprecedented.

To create app compatibility requires a consortium or standards group to be formed. Let’s call it the “Mobile app Equivalent Software Syndicate” or MESS for short. MESS sits around, and wastes most of its time stuck in bureaucratic endeavors, only occasionally putting out the next version of the standard. Google and Apple (and Microsoft) would constantly bicker over minutiae relating to the standard and MESS gets nothing done.

Suddenly, the breakneck pace of mobile OS development slows to a screeching halt. Developers are forced to embrace the “lowest common denominator” strategy of supporting the lowest version of the MESS standard that is widely deployed. Instead of developers getting to use the latest and coolest APIs for the apps, they’re stuck with MESS v1.0 for years and years and years.

This would be particularly devastating to Apple, who has a huge competitive advantage compared to every other vendor — their user base upgrades their OS faster than anywhere else. The majority of users will be on iOS 6 within weeks of it becoming available, and developers can immediately start coding to support whiz-bang new features of iOS 6 and know that the majority of users will have it.

Meanwhile, developers of Android still have to assume that most users do not have a version of the OS newer than 2.3, even though Ice Cream Sandwich has been out for over a year now.

Why on earth would Apple have any incentive to buy into MESS? They’re still the first place developers write new apps, they have a huge competitive advantage in their ability to upgrade users, and they have a user base that is more willing to pay for software than any other. Why would they give up all of these advantages in order to allow their users to more easily switch to other platforms? They never (and I AM saying NEVER here) would.

There are already ways to write interoperable apps that require minimal re-work to deploy on each platform. Adobe offers such a tool — the NBC Olympic apps were written using it. Did you try the NBC Olympic apps? They were incredibly slow, awkward to use, and didn’t take advantage of the User Interface idioms on either major platform. That’s the kind of junk “lowest common denominator” app we can look forward to if cross-platform development takes off further.

Yes, it sounds great in theory — apps that run on both iOS and Android — yay! Until you realize that it would be the worst thing ever — destroying the rapid pace of Mobile OS development and handing the keys to a bickering, bureaucratic consortium, and leading to a world of crappy, “lowest common denominator” apps that stink on both iOS and Android.

Adam, great response. The same arguments have been made against web standards, which, after a decade of wrangling, have turned out to be a boon. It’s interesting to consider, what other than Apple’s market position, is different about the app ecosystem than the web dev ecosystem as to why standards wouldn’t ultimately be positive. Your point about the difference in the user update compliance speed between iOS and Android is very acute, and you are right that that is one of the main reasons developers build for iOS first.

Just FYI, I am not naive about the market considerations, but I do try to look at things from a user perspective and call out when the companies’ strategy and the users’ needs are not in line. In this case, the speed of Apple’s development could be considered a user benefit, so you are right to question my question.

the apple magic never fails to amaze people, at the same time, the google simplicity is a blessing. combine the two and we live in utopia. If Cook and page could just think of the consumer needs for once, we could live a technological dream.

The problem with this scenario is that Apple has put a lot of work into making the iOS and the app environment head and shoulders above everyone else. Why should they basically give away their crown jewels? Apple doesn’t need to cooperate for growth’s sake. They don’t need Google. They have no reason to do it, besides the fact that it would be extraordinarily difficult and expensive, asking Apple to cooperate on a common API would be asking them to give away millions of dollars. The same thing with Apple’s iTunes. Why on Earth do they have any reason to give users a reason to not buy their products? Let’s be realistic here.

I host my e-mail and calendar on Google Apps. I have no problems using it with my iPhone and iPad. If there are any problems, then the two companies need to work on interoperability, but that doesn’t require common application standards.

Marcel, You and Adam make really good points. The thing I do take issue with is the not needing Google part. Of that, I am not convinced. It would be interesting to know the difference in scale between Google’s contextual data and Apple’s, but I would no be surprised if Google’s is an order of magnitude greater or more. As Google applies that data to real-world search situations, their advantage may grow. Apple may have the superior “one-off” app ecosystem, a source of innovation, undoubtably, but Google’s core software products have, I believe, a significant and growing advantage.

Apple and Google should cooperate, but again that cooperation doesn’t mean that Apple simply gives away their competitive advantage, just as Google shouldn’t simply give away the data they’ve worked so hard to cultivate. I see Google as a great engineering R&D firm and Apple as great user focused technology company. They should work together to advance technology as a whole forward. Instead, it seems they are now antagonistic to each other. Android seems to be the sticking point, so whatever issues they have here need to be brought to light and worked out.

Android is Open Source, it’s API is fully open, one doesn’t even have to follow Google terms to create an Android compatible device (like Amazon did). Even Apple and Microsoft could build their OS Android compatible if they wanted to, but they want to create ther own closed environment and build an ecosystem that won’t run outside of their platforms. They want users to have no option but then. That’s why me and a lot of people support Android, not because we simply preffer it, but because it sets us free in many ways. - Microsoft wants you to use their closed software platform and nothing more, so we are free to choose hardware vendors, but only Microsoft can build an Operating System fully capable of running Windows apps. That’s bad. - Apple wants you to use their closed software AND hardware platform, so only Apple can build a device and an OS capable of running Mac/iOS apps. That’s insane.

Google has no interest in locking user to a hardware or software platform, they may want to lock you in their cloud platform, because it’s where their business is, but that’s another story.

Microsoft helped to build an open hardware platform for Windows to run on any vendor devices, since based in x86; Samsung, Sony, HP, ASUS, ACER develop their own closed hardware, but they’re all based in and compatible with the PC specification (x86/x64). In the same way, Google is building an open software platform for Google services to run on any vendor Operating Systems, since based in Android. Samsung, HTC, LG, Sony are all developing their own closed source Operating Systems, but they’re all based in and compatible with Android.

So, Google already did what you desire by making Android open. It would not be hard for others to be compatible, get an Android certification and build one only open ecosystem, but I guess THEY are not really interested.